Mechanical characterization of biomechanical tissues, in particular muscle cells such as single cardiac myocytes is used to understand normal and disease states. In particular, it is desirable to characterize such tissues upon exposure to stimuli such as pharmaceuticals, electric fields, gene modification, and the like.
These difficult measurements are performed using a position actuator and a force transducer. A wide variety of systems have been explored in the art to explore the mechanics of cardiac myocytes (single cells), muscle tissue (groups of cells) or myofilaments (contractile apparatus within single cells), typically employing a combination of expensive precision commercial actuators and custom force sensors. These systems and their associated electronics, optics and fluidics are often bulky and not well suited to high throughput measurements.
One approach employs polysilicon beams in a fixed/cantilever arrangement with a piezoelectric strain gauge to measure displacement. Another approach employs a steel cantilever with an open loop piezoelectric transducer adapted from an atomic force microscope. Another group attached a myocyte to two compliant wire loops in a magnetic field and independently controlled the current in each.